Type Hunting, A Tumblr of Gorgeous Vintage Letters

Whether you need to rinse your eyes and brain from too many shiny beveled logos with gradients, or you are looking for inspiration for your next hipster logo design, Type Hunting is a real treat. This Tumblr collects images of old artifacts with letters on them, mostly old logos and brand marks. The name however is misleading – almost all the images show lettering, not type, but let’s not nitpick. Not that much different from any Flickr Group on the same subject, the images are gorgeous and a must-see for lovers of vintage design. A beautiful complement to Chromeography, Stephen Coles’ collection of metal logos, lettering, emblems, and badges affixed to vintage automobiles and electric appliances.

Chromeography

If you need to (re)create your own vintage-style logos, here are a few FontLists to get you going.

5 Comments:

I dig Type Hunting. Great finds and good photos. But I can’t understand the crop format. Why vertical images when most of the marks are horizontal? This makes even less sense than the square format that Instagram has foisted upon letter documentation.

More disappointing than the portrait orientation is the lack of any kind of meta data. Many of these discoveries would be so much more interesting with some context. What is this object? Where was it shot? Who shot it?

‘Type’ is the wrong word to use — most of the examples are hand-lettered. Try saying ‘Letterforms’ or ‘Lettering’.

Posted by Chris Purcell on
Aug. 14, 2013

Indeed, exactly what I said in the introduction.

Posted by Yves Peters on
Aug. 15, 2013

My only complaint is that there are no dates associated with each image. I’m not interested in the other meta data so much as the dates; I like to know when the design was developed. It helps to know when stereotyping (no pun intended) fonts to the particular eras in which they were most prevalent.